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March 21, 2012

Amazon.com - Tax Warrior


The State of Illinois thought that it would be a good idea to extort money from online retailors by levying a user tax. State politicians and bureaucrats were drooling over the prospect of wringing collecting an extra $150 million to piss away on the usual suspects.

WRONG!
The law redefined what constitutes a company's "physical presence" in the state, which is the benchmark used to determine if an out-of-state retailer is required to collect use tax from Illinois customers. Legislators determined that a company simply having an affiliate program in the state—where independent websites provide links back to the retailer in exchange for a small commission—was enough of a "presence" to meet the criteria.

Following a pattern already established in other states that passed similar laws, large online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com simply terminated all affiliate agreements in Illinois, opting themselves out of having to collect the tax.

[...]

The result? An actual decrease in use tax collected of over $11 million. Numbers given to Chicagoist by the Illinois Department of Revenue show that in the period of January 2011 through June 2011, IDOR collected approximately $139 million in use tax. After the law went into effect on July 1, the total amount collected between then and the end of the year was approximately $127 million.

[...]

Not only did smaller websites based in Illinois lose a revenue stream, but larger companies that rely more heavily on affiliate income like Fat Wallet and Coupon Cabin simply packed up and moved to neighboring states, taking their jobs and income tax with them.

7 comments:

TS/WS said...

reverse psychology--Destroy the Economy and not get accused of the un-American Tactics.
Unless you think they are idiots. I don't. Mot is-operandi. There is an obvious agenda.

TS/WS said...

Los Angeles City Council pass a law about un exceptable language - which will run off radio advertisers and destroy conservative radio shows, it has begun.
If Obama gets more time to raise Taxes and more regulations thru Admin. slight of hand, the economy will tank before the end of his 2nd term-just as planned. They are not idiots. Unless they just don't think the American People will push back; these dopes have trained 2 generations not to push back.

sig94 said...

TSWS - the liberal agenda destroys everything it touches. The koolaid drinkers just ignore it and tottle on towards the precipice like lemmings.

Kid said...

Sums up perfectly how moronic democrats think.

And illinois continues to vote in the democraps like they have for the last forever years.

sig94 said...

Kid - no thinking involved. They are political emos, they feel.

Woodsterman (Odie) said...

Are you sure this wasn't about California?

sig94 said...

Odie - sounds about right for the left coast, eh? Trouble is, they won;t bother looking at other States to see what happened. They'll go right ahead with the same nonsense and the same results and act surprised when it blows up in their faces.